Analysis of the near collapse of the Maya civilization in the
second century, and its full collapse in the eighth, should
sound alarms about our own society, according to AOM scholars.
An Academy of Management Journal article reveals that
people who secretly believe their colleagues overestimate
their competence may be more valuable than they realize. This
finding challenges the common wisdom that imposter syndrome is
uniformly harmful.
The more you feel like a professional, thinking you know all
there is to know about avoiding influence from conflicts of
interest, the more likely you are to put yourself in
situations that can compromise your integrity.
Today’s leaders are making the same kind of bad decisions
lamented by Sophocles 2,500 years ago in his tragic play,
Antigone, according to an
Academy of Management Review article.
When traumatic events like police killings of Black Americans
happen, employees who identify with victims of the event often
feel that they, too, are in danger. Those fears can spill over
into the workplace, making it more difficult for employees to
focus on their jobs.
With gender bias being widely viewed as an issue for white
women, and racial discrimination seen as pertaining to black
men, black women are often left in a void.
As organizations grapple with the Great Resignation, it’s more
important than ever for leaders to foster a sense that
employees’ work is meaningful. One way to boost employees’
feelings that their jobs are worthy is through measurement
practices that help workers gauge the value of their work.
"Relational tension matters. And it matters maybe more
than positive emotions. That can be surprising because there
is a certain predisposition to believe in the power of the
positive," an AOM scholar explains. "It's
avoiding tension, a negative emotion, that matters the most.”
Knowledge errors—problems with incorrect, missing, or old
information—often lead to action errors. In health care, that
could mean giving a patient the wrong medicine or failing to
discuss the most concerning symptom, AOM scholars say.
In democratic societies, new organizations addressing social
causes need to create as much buzz as possible about
themselves to gain attention and grow. New social ventures
under authoritarian regimes, however, need to take a much
different approach.
